Privacy

Last year, a Russian startup
announced
that it could scan the faces of
people passing by Moscow's thousands of CCTV cameras and pick out wanted
criminals or missing persons. Unlike much face recognition technology -
which runs stills from videos or photographs after the fact - NTechLab's
FindFace algorithm has achieved a feat that once only seemed possible in the
science fictional universe of "Minority Report": It can determine not just
who someone is, but where they've been, where they're going, and whether
they have an outstanding warrant, immigration detainer, or unpaid traffic
ticket.